I make, write and teach about activist media and have been doing so since the 1980s. You can find lots about me at: http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~ajuhasz.
I am committed to “Media Praxis”: thinking about and making lively, intelligent, opinionated, democratic media. Media that looks to history, theory and politics as well as real people’s needs and experiences. I believe that making and seeing such work feeds people, and the world, in ways that corporate or dominant media never could.
I’ll be blogging about this kind of media and Media Praxis, the integration of theory, practice and politics. I’ll also be attending to YouTube, where I’ll be teaching an experimental class starting in September called Learning From YouTube. The entire class will be about and on the site.
In October, I’ll probably begin blogging on my new documentary, “SCALE: Ending the BUSH AGENDA in the Media Age” (more below). I’d also like to spend some time re-visiting AIDS activist video of the 1980s as well as contemporary work on the topic.
I am a professor at Pitzer College in Claremont CA where I teach Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies and Cultural Studies. My books and articles focus on the media production of political movements or communities in which I am also a player: AIDS activism, feminism, alternative families, peace. I’ve written the books: “AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video,” “Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Media,” and co-edited “F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing” with my colleague, Jesse Lerner. I’m currently working on a web-based publication, Media Praxis, with the on-line publishers, MediaCommons. See: mediacommons.futureofthebook.org.
I am currently completing a feature documentary, “SCALE: Ending the BUSH AGENDA in the Media Age,” about and with my sister, Antonia, a policy-wonk and peace and anti-globalization activist. She just wrote a big anti-Bush book (www.thebushagenda.net) for HarperCollins, and my documentary follows her as she “scales up,” getting more media, corporate, and public attention. It is a personal story that reverberates with global themes: does individual action effect social change. A feminist documentary, it shows through sisterly love and conflict how the personal is the political in the media age. I’ll be blogging about the hard work of getting the documentary seen, and used as an activist tool that might contribute to ending this illicit war and the regime that supports it.
I have also made the feature documentaries “Video Remains” (about mourning my best friend who died of AIDS, James Lamb, and the consequences of forgetting), “Dear Gabe” (the portrait of six of my closest friends who each compose their families and lives on their own terms), “Women of Vision,” (18 portraits of feminists engaging media to better their lives and world). I also produced the feature film “The Watermelon Woman,” the first African-American lesbian feature film, and a fake documentary to boot. See http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~ajuhasz for clips and more info!
I am the mother of two children, and I live with my partner and his daughter in Pasadena.